secret

 Apprehension wrestles anticipation 

packed up goodies

leaving work to get lost

questions roll around clouding vision

routine has only just settled chaos 

and now, this

am I ready for it? 

6 long years of nothing this festival resembles

6 long years of aggression, depression, relentless

6 years of undermined angst

6 years passed, at last

I am all this secret garden is

walking splendor between trees 

all people

eyes open 

free

more love, drugs, hugs, dreams than can be spoken through cracked pursed lips

for

no-one here is your enemy

no-one here is your enemy

no-one here is your enemy

I start to believe

Maybe

Just maybe

I am 

ready

inertia

 4am 

Fuck

every time

big event today

must be clear headed

3 hours sleep

face hangs heavy

eyes blurred

coffee

coffee

coffee

memory drains

focus failing

too many papers

waiting

for 

the crash

one 

last

email

sleep

sleep

sleep

Angel

When feathers fall In their dancing grace

Our eyes meet

She destroys me, ever so softly

A callous injustice on my weakened soul

her tongue curls and lips moisten

glimmer of disastrous deeds flicker 

through her

into me

Brazened and beaten I react

And set my heart alive

I want this women

I need her

For She will be

my end

The trip

 I think I died a few days ago

At least that’s what the shrooms told me

A single blink of pure nothingness

Everything completely stopped

And then

just

Darkness

It didn’t feel so bad

Freaked out initially

But if that is all death is

no need to be anxious

It is just a point 

where all things come to an end

And the world 

ceases to exist

In Utero

 'In Utero' was the albums name. Nirvana. 

Blake had found it cracked and gritted and opened slightly by the side of the road on one of his walks home from school. He had been just 11 then. He'd never seen a CD before. All his friends at that time had iPhones, Samsungs, Huaweis, and google phones, all chocked full of irrelevance and musical spectres. Streams of previews and promises, but never ownership. That was the way of the world back then, times changed quickly. People still collected vinyls but more for nostalgia, for show, for decoration, the vinyl itself rarely played. CD's in their own right, were dead. 

Lifting the cafetière and pouring the hot black contents into a mug, Blake found himself thinking of nothing.  Stirring as he did he clinked the spoon in time with Kurt's cracked pleading vocals. 'I've been clink locked clink inside clink your clink heart clink shaped clink box for weeks...'. Picking up his mug he moved over to his sofa bed (it took all of 4 steps), and sat carefully next to Lisa's rigid paled body. There was only one window in the bedsit, and outside rain pounded and cried and clawed tendrilled streams across the small window pane. Only light from the TV, illuminated the small room. Static, black and white, dotted and pixel patterned coursing across the screen. There was no white noise though, Blake had since turned the sound down, replaced instead with Nirvana, replaced with Kurt. He had removed the needle from Lisa's arm then, and had placed it on the kitchen counter next to the cafetière. Lisa hadn't moved of course, she rarely did after a hit. 

He sipped his coffee and stared at the static. He had known this day would come for a while so he just sat, and stared, and listened.  'I wish I could eat your cancer when you turn black'. Lisa had been streaming for years now, nearly a decade. She often let herself into Blake's flat, stuck on an old VHS movie and had her hit. Blake had refused at first, disgusted, bewildered, and distraught by the cancer she was injecting herself with. Soon though he had realised that better here, in his bedsit, with a VHS, something concrete, than the alternative. Better here where her streams could find some purchase. Oft times,  she would come too in between hits. He would be sat next to her, with Nirvana in the background, and they would see each other, and smile, and they would be 11 again.  11, where they sat in their shared bedroom, huddled round an old Sony Discman, with one earphone in each, listening to Kurt's strangled screams of rape and love and abuse and anarchistic melancholy-  where his rage could be their defiance to the sounds of rape and love and abuse and anarchistic melancholy coming from downstairs.  

Blake took another sip of his black tar and stretched his left hand over to his sisters face. Cold. Their mother would be here soon. She had wanted to see her daughter before he called the hospital. Blake hadn’t argued, there was no point. 

Carefully, gingerly, with a shaking hand, palm to her eyes, he felt the lashes and stroked down shutting her sight. In the other hand he held his coffee. One warm and comforting, the other..? Their mother would not want to see her daughter staring into the abyss. 

His hand returned to his brew, to warm again, and he let his gaze drift from the television set to the object that lay on top. As he did, Kurt in his gravel, rang out his chorus. ‘Hey! Wait! I’ve got a new complaint. Forever in debt to your priceless advice.’ There, resting above, on top of the tv, was a cd case, cracked and gritted, and opened, slightly.

Blake turned his head to look at the lifeless body of his sister, then, back at the cd case. 

‘In Utero’, was the album's name. 

Nirvana.  

It Follows

 Everyone has a shadow.

We are all chased by them. They are the part of us that carry our hatred, our loss, our destructive torment, regret, shame and secrets. They are the part of us we choose not to show, they are our truth. We cannot run from them. With all our efforts. Whether born again, rejuvenated, reinvented, they will always chase us. We only know the way to mute pain through the experience we gain from our own mistakes. Our shadows are already on our shoulders. We can never run from them. They are us. And with each waking day, they draw nearer.

It’s just in this place, in my world, we can see them, we can feel them.

Some understand this too late and are faced with their mortality far too early

For our shadow will always catch up to us eventually. And take us with them into The Blackness. Do you walk hand in hand with death, or ignore it when you wake?

Why do you think your world sells sex, sells celebrities, alcohol, sells hopes, dreams, the starry eyed rose tinted potential of possibility. Platforms to create a new person. Why do you think your world thrives on showing the lives of others on your TV’s?

In one heartbeat you can see them dressed, sequins flowing down a carpet of impossible red, gleaming through the flashes and beaming their perfect white smile at no one in particular. Then, just as swiftly, see the cold, see the destitution of those have nots, clawing at one more day to stay in your world. And be comfortable on your sofa

It’s all a distraction..

The people of your world have long forgotten their shadows. Forgotten why they are so important. Forgotten what they mean. Most trap them in their hearts with a cup of tea, a map, a design. Most people in The Real World believe themselves to be of good conscience, of good intent, believing themselves selfless, genuine, sincere. Most, are wrong. They have merely forgotten the lessons they have learnt throughout their life. Ignoring the way a person reacts to their quiet leering comments, scrunched faces, reeling at something they’ve said, or, agreeing with what is unsaid, internally. They carelessly dispel that feeling they get after hearing the crunch of a snail crushed underfoot. They choose to have another beer, to put on cheaply manufactured threads without thought of their origin, to pick sides and walk past desolation.

Most people choose to ignore the dominoes they push. 

This is why your world was created. Ignorance is bliss. And your money helps you buy it. 

In my world, we wear our scars as shadows, for all to see. In this we face morality, unhidden behind a Visard, open, like the sores you see on the wrists of the unshackled. But, in this, we also see our own mortality, which is why every action counts. We have not departed from our origin as you have.

You have an opportunity. A choice only you can make.

Will you welcome your shadow and become all that you are? Or choose to hide behind your own eyes, choose to believe the lies that are spread all around you and listen to the whispered echoes that crash off every wall in your world?

You have the choice. Meet your shadow.  

It is, to be free.

To know you are not separate from the cosmos. To know that your part in this life is as important as the next. We are all made of the same underneath our skin. Particles. Part of a whole. Part of all. Part of it all.

There is no separation. We are all as we are when we came into this world. We are all part of a living breathing ecosystem, we are not our skin. We are the shadows that follow us 

Welcome your Shadow.

Start 

to 

begin.

The silent worker

It was the crisps that saved me. 

Grand packets titled in a language not of my hometown. Not of theirs either. Dialect of the invisible worker, designing luxury for the ones that trap them. Ni mang Juan. 

I sit in my car, darkness hangs silent, propped up by artificial sand, ringed by black blood, fuelling the lives of others far away on the other side of the country. 

hand reaches in bag, one on tongue, suck up chilli vinegar then crunch, one after one after one

 Stare out to sea 

stare out to see the faces raged with misplaced hatred at their teacher. 

I am a stranger. 

"Let us be", they cry. 

We don't need English with Allah by our side. And then smile and spit on the floor. 

Throw books at the one who comes to clean it for them. Throw desks at the one who teaches them. 

I swallow, pea acting potato sliding down throat. 

Preconceptions tell me no one can make crisps out of peas, it's an impossibility. But, it is more than any crisp I have ever eaten. And somehow, it heals this beaten teacher, contemplating inclusion in this desperate situation. 

5 minutes of eating, 

breathe and think... 

I

am

lucky.

They, have no choice, that is why they are angry. 

They have no choice that is why they hurt me. 

They have no choice, forced to make miracles for their captors. 

They have no choice, a pea, a potato, a passport. 

Have, have not?

 Humans

BBQ flesh

Delicious….

Savages

Or 

desperation

Protein

For the unseen

Anemia

Bacterial

Poker

Unclean

Reverie.

Consume

The dead

Become part

Of the living

BackStage

 We spark em up  

in this light bulb moment 

Huddled under smoking 

In the Rain 

 

A Cast of cuties  

and their party darlins 

Rock ‘n’ roll lotharios 

And their pain 

E

 Dragging my feet I resist the beat and find contentment in melancholy

All around are the sounds of frowns turned upside down by the clowns of secret garden party

But I don’t feel

I am not included

For inhibitions have become deluded and are jailed by the diseased thoughts rotting through my brain

the same tape

Playing over and over again

I should have sprung upon the chance to release my anger

Tell her I couldn’t stand her anymore

That the very sight of either of them raged an internal decision that wedged a slice in my moral division 

But I didn’t act, I didn’t react. I just stood and stared, impaired by the impending despair I was to be thrown into.

I’m glad I haven’t seen them again

no matter how much my twisted mind imagined their end 

In all truth

I couldn’t bring myself to raise my eyes to them

for loci is my intent not my intervention.

So as the sun beats down on my harrowed head

I follow the lads into the remix tent

A stage ablaze with dub step DJ's Magnetic Man and fans tearing it up their own way, sending a rippling wave across the masses and the crowd loosen their legs and let the music guide them

I see Blackers riding the wave to the stage where the rest of the crew continue to rave

And I follow

 Moving slow and steady to the enticing entrancing harmony

I find a little pocket in the crowd look around and clock it instantly 

Josh the adulterer smiling uncontrollably as he invades my mates, has his hands over the face and hips of one of the girls.

'That’s fucking it, had enough of this shit!’,

clenched fists

teeth grit

a red mist descends over my eyes and I stride side by side with Blackers but I don’t notice him this time

And as I carve my way to the bane of my insanity with daggered glares and muttered profanity 

My body becomes tense,

hell bent on inflicting the sort of pain he had on my brain and self esteem

I reach him as I smoulder, tap him on the shoulder draw back my hand ready to make him look 40 years older

But in the midst of the swing forward

another hand intervenes,

screened from my eyes

I turn my head to take in who would dream of coming in between me and my destiny and it’s her.

E

Instantly the rage drains from my veins and my eyes, ears and body are filled with the softness she instils and I relax.

Her hand travels up my forearm to my clenched fist where she uncurls fingers and calms it to rest in her hand

and she stares into my soul

Fully in control of me now

she takes my hand down to her back, still in hers, she turns.

 And before my ego can put me back on angered roads

She slowly, gently, leads me out of my own personal inferno.

Now away from the raving bass my angry face turns to sorrow

Still following her I wish for tomorrow for another day to be as far away from the person that almost destroyed me

But as I contemplate my fate my eyes slowly rise from the floor

Lain in front of me is a sight only the rare see 

Lights glow all around all different colours that dance to sounds of freedom over the large lake behind main stage, illuminating reflections of the stars and the pirate ship bar in the middle.

And she turns to me as we stop on a hill away from the festivities

And she whispers, barely audible, close to my ear

“Your time is here,

not then and not before,

not tomorrow,

not anymore.

Now

this moment in this time

with me by your side

Let go

Let go”

She pulls her lips away and brings her head close and looks into me

Her eyes radiate perfect innocence, redemption, a rebirth from my crippling malevolence and I notice her, not for the first time, nor the last and my hands start shaking and she clasps them so tightly.

Ashamed, I can do nothing but look to my bare feet

The raging intensity of hatred, mistrust, betrayal all apart, combine in crippling velocity as a sledgehammer on my heart

and

I

break

down.

One tear at a time, slips from my eyes and after a while, grow to a divine monsoon

I am at my weakest

awash in vulnerably

a soft wind could easily shatter the stability of my legs at any minute

but it never comes.

Instead so very calmly a soft hand guides itself under my chin and she pulls my head up to a level position

She has me

in her eyes I see fire, I see health

a wealth of love in kind and caring, a beauty that I can’t stop staring at.

And she utters but a single sentence

“You have to die a few times before you can learn to live, forgive yourself”'

My heart and head, battered by the surge of emotion click in time once more and for once, before becomes no more.

As the only thing in this moment is her,

the one

I adore

And then it hits me, a distinguishing clarity. 

My heart is hers, and hers in me,

it always has been. 

I was just too busy looking to see. . .

quicksand

 Fastidious and berated

days play havoc with senses

Murky and forgotten memories of an innocence 

struggle to break through

And pain is all that resides

Longing for an exit,

Yet too tired to take it

Muster up the energy my son

Another day

another dirham